CFACT SoCal

By Warren Duffy

With the recent bankruptcy announcement of yet another solar company, does it seem practical for the government to continue backing renewable energy companies while ignoring the slow and steady fossil fuels?

Here are the facts…YOU decide.

As of today, five major U.S. solar companies bit the renewable green dust and filed for bankruptcy, costing investors and taxpayers billions.

The latest to declare bankruptcy was Solar Trust for America that received $2.1-Billion in loan guarantees from the U.S. Energy Department.  The company was planning two major solar electric generating plants in the California desert east of Palm Springs, one covering more than 3,000 acres of public land.  On Monday, April 2^nd in a Delaware Bankruptcy Court, the company reported $10-million in assets and debt of more than $100-million.

Prior to the Solar Trust bankruptcy, the largest solar failure in America was the Solyndra solar panel manufacturing plant in Fremont, CA.  It lost over a billion dollars of investor backing from private backers like George Kaiser (known Obama campaign bundler), the Walton Family (Wal-Mart) and Richard Branson (Virgin Airways).  The bankruptcy of Solyndra and the $535 Million in U.S. Energy Department loan guarantees tripped a Congressional investigation.  How did the company ever qualify for the federal dollars? Why were they applying for a second government loan while the company was just months away from bankruptcy?  The investigation continues.

In February, the Auburn Hills, Michigan company Energy Conversion Devices and the parent company of Uni-Solar, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, costing investors another $250 Million.  The solar panel maker produced thin solar panels for commercial rooftop installations

Evergreen Solar also hit the skids last year and lost more than $485 Million of investor’s money.  The Michigan solar panel manufacturer claimed that China manufactured similar solar equipment and flooded the American solar panel market with cheaper panels, triggering their demise. (Solyndra and President Obama have been known to call the same “foul” on China.)

The smallest of the five solar firms to go belly up last year was Spectra Watt.  When the firm filed for bankruptcy last year, by comparison, they lost a paltry $38.7 MILLION when the firm filed for bankruptcy last year.

The total losses of the five American solar businesses exceeds $3 Billion. However, a German based solar company, Q-Cells, one time listed as the largest solar company in the world, showed $1.13-billion in losses in 2011 and filed “insolvency proceedings” on April 2, 2012.  It appears America is not alone in renewable energy disasters.

By Warren Duffy

With the first day of “Rio +20” or “Earth Summit 2012” commencing June 20, 2012, world leaders, delegates from governments around the globe, private businesses and  activist organizations will descend on Rio de Janiero, Brazil.  Reference of “20” marks the 20^th anniversary since the first Earth Summit held in Rio in 1992.

On the U.N.’s official conference website, the conference is described as a “joint endeavor of the entire U.N. system.”   If the background of the three executives appointed by the United Nations with the organization and implementation of the Rio +20 conference provide any insight, the State Department teams will have their hands full..

The U.N. Secretary General of “Rio +20” is Chinese career diplomat, Sha Zukang.  According to the “Huffington Post”, two years ago at a U.N. dinner in Europe, Sha Zukang was caught in a “drunken rant” stating, “I really don’t like him.  He’s an American and I really don’t like Americans.”  The target of his outburst was American U.N. official, Bob Orr. However, U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki Moon of South Korea was also the recipient of similar insults that evening.  It was reported that an apology to both diplomats was received from Sha Zukang the following day.

The first U.N. appointed “executive coordinator” is Brice Lalonde, a French student in 1968 and lifelong, committed environmental activist -former Green Party leader and French candidate for President in 1981 and first cousin of Massachusetts Senator, John Kerry.  Lalonde led a series of riots in France with the intent of moving the people to a more “adaptive and calmer socialism”.  His activism continued when he joined David McTaggart, Greenpeace founder, t to create the confrontational strategies of boarding ships at sea in protest of French nuclear testing.

Second “executive coordinator” for Rio +20 is Liz Thompson from Barbados. Her home town newspaper, “Barbados Free Press” opposes her appointment to this position writing, “In fourteen years, she and her BLP (Barbados Labor Party) government never passed Environmental Protection Legislation.”

Shortly after Thompson’s nomination to Rio +20’s executive position, the newspaper published a December 2010 article quoting environmental expert and professor, Hans G. Mache describing Thompson as a “notorious liar, immoral, unethical and totally untrustworthy.”

In 1995, then the island-nation’s Minister of Health, Thompson was engaged in a heated debate with environmental activist, Richard Goddard.  He opposed her plans to create a dump in a pristine Barbados watershed area and bringing international media outlets to cover the debate.  Thompson was so outraged by this ploy for global coverage, she shocked island viewers by stating, “I take extreme offense at a Caucasian male telling me, as a Minister of Government in modern Barbados, that he is going to threaten to embarrass a national government in this way.  It is completely unacceptable.”

The big three executives wielding power over “Rio +20 /Earth Summit” have backgrounds from “I really don’t like Americans”, a leader of revolts and environmental activism and a once Barbados government official playing the race card during a televised debate.  Could this conference be “peppered” with other agendas outside the global environment?  The global meeting from June 20 to June 22^nd will certainly provide many answers..

By – Warren Duffy

Another solar boondoggle has exploded in the open expanses of the hot, parched California desert.  This news broke with a force exceeding last year’s mind numbing exposure of the California solar panel company, Solyndra, going belly-up.

Solar Trust of America advertises, “Powering America’s future with proven and bankable technology.”  However, ‘bankable technology’ is now ‘bankruptable’ for Solar Trust.  The California “alternative energy company” infused with $2.1 BILLION of tax-payer money funneled to them through the much beleaguered U.S. Department of Energy has filed Chapter 11.

The crown jewel of Solar Trust of America is the huge Blythe solar plant in Riverside County, California.  When ground breaking ceremonies launched in June 2011, Secretary Ken Salazar proudly displayed a golden spade at the site, while California Governor Jerry Brown sported a hard hat for the press and cameras.

Back in D.C., Energy Secretary Steven Chu had glowing words for the Blythe Boondoggle stating, “(This is) the largest amount ever offered to a solar project,” as his department signed off on the huge loan guarantee.  “When we rev up the great American innovation machine, we can out-compete any other nation.”

Secretary Salazar echoed Chu’s sentiments as he shoveled desert dirt at the Blythe site. “(This is) a historic moment in making America’s clean energy future a reality,” he beamed. Governor Brown added that the project would be a “major engine for job creation and economic growth”.

Blythe is the nearest desert town located eight miles east of the construction site.  The massive desert solar panel field stretches across more than 7,000 acres of parched public land located along Interstate 10, the highway that meanders eastward through barren desert before it crosses the California border with Arizona.  Blythe officials were anticipating an employment bonanza of 1,000 new construction jobs from the Solar Trust project.

Instead, on April 2^nd, less than a year later, attorneys for Solar Trust marched into a Delaware bankruptcy court.  They filed a listed total debt of $100/million with assets of only $10/million, asking the court’s permission to reorganize.

In late August 2011, Solar Trust of America issued a glowing press release that announced the “first 500 MW phase of the project was about to be converted from concentrated solar power (CSP) to photovoltaic technology (PVT).”  Eight months later, bankruptcy.

Just how much money American taxpayers lost in this latest alternative energy debacle is unknown.  Neither Solar Trust officials nor Secretary of Energy Steven Chu have issued any statements about the loan or the bankruptcy.

Last year, the first domino in a line of toppling solar companies tipped and crashed when the Solyndra solar panel manufacturing plant in Freemont, California went bankrupt and defaulted on a $535-million federal loan guarantee.  That loan caused embarrassment for President Obama who made a personal appearance and a televised speech touting the productive investment of taxpayer dollars in the alternative energy company Solyndra.

Congress is currently conducting an investigation of the Solyndra loan guarantee. When the company’s application was first received in D.C., it was described by Bush Administration officials as “not ready for prime time”.  The loan guarantee, promoted by Vice President Joe Biden, was approved by the Obama Administration through the Energy Department’s investment in alternative energy programs.

The bankruptcy of Solar Trust for America is four times the size of the Solyndra crash and adds to growing concerns that the nation is spending taxpayer’s dollars as “risk capitol” on schemes that may be technically unproven and economically unsound.  Along with Solar Trust and Solyndra, three other American solar firms have recently gone bust, Evergreen Solar, SpectraWatt and Energy Conversion Devices (Uni-Solar).

The week began in Europe with a German firm, Q-Cells, that advertised itself as “the largest solar company in the world”.  Q-Cells is now launching insolvency proceedings.  They claim the company lost $1.13-billion in 2011 and is unable to operate. In a statement released to the German media Monday, a Q-Cell spokesperson said, “The company can not be restored on a sufficiently secure legal basis, therefore the filing for insolvency proceedings is legally necessary.”

As usual, the mainstream media is yapping about news worthy items like “Super Lotto”.  Meanwhile,  2800 environmental “big wigs” were gathering the last week of March in London.  This was a meeting to call the world’s scientists, policymakers, media and industry representatives to hear the “latest research findings on the state of our planet and discuss concepts for planetary stewardship and societal and economic transformation toward global sustainability.”

SIDE NOTE:  “Sustainability”.  This word was emphasized at the 1997 U.N. Kyoto meeting promising our global societies with a bright,  forward looking agenda for the “new” 21st century.  That program came be known as “Agenda 21“.

Why this desperate push for more “sustainability?  The London group contends the  latest crisis for Mother Earth is the “population bomb”.  The  three day conference is the big lead up to the “Rio-Plus 20″ U.N. meeting, opening June 6, 2012 in Rio, Brazil.   It marks the 20th anniversary of the first U.N. Earth Summit of 1992 held at the same location.

“Earth Under Pressure” is the title for the  London conference and  harkens back to Paul Ehrlich’s 1960′s book  “Population Bomb”, printed by by the publishing arm of the Sierra Club.  Long before the 1970 Earth Day, Ehrlich was predicting that by 1975 there would be mass starvation.  Why?  The planet would simply be unable to feed the “explosion” of people on the planet.

In case the population survived starvation,  Ehrlich addressed the 1970 New York Earth Day Celebration with yet another crisis also soon destined for the planet….the “Ice Age”.

It is now 42 years later and we have escaped from the “hole in the ozone layer” to the loss of the Amazon Rain Forest’s “lungs of the earth”  to Al Gore’s chicken little’s version of the “sky is falling” altered slightly to predict ice bergs melting, polar bears dying and oceans rising.  From “global warming” to “climate change” to “green house gas” (GHG) and “Cap and Trade”, we have arrived back from where it all began…too many people on the planet.

By the magic year 2050, the experts in London say the population of the planet will grow from today’s 7 billion people to 9 billion.  In others, we are to believe there will be 1 million new arrivals on the planet each week for the next 38 years. That is 19.231 new arrivals every day or 802 babies born every minute.

Folks, if the numbers they are throwing out there is true, that would be a population bomb far beyond anything Paul Ehrlich could have ever hoped to project. Bit wait…there is more.  These same ‘experts’ warn us that once folks who lived in rural America get the flavor of city living, they begin arriving en masse at the cramped urban spaces of the big cities.  Some argue as soon as folks earn enough money in the cramped big city, they leave city-living behind and head for the ‘burbs’….and experts say, “nonsense, the cities will be awash with people – unless. . .”   And herein lies the experts tasks before them….solutions for the new crisis at hand…and they are prepared.

One extreme solution is the older “eugenics” theory – “only the best survive”.  Defective, inferior,  old people who add nothing to society while draining precious sustainable resources are best dispatched from the planet.  This is of course not a new theory and was popular until that German guy in the last century  got carried away.  Surprisingly, this concept appears to be front and center once again.

Another solution to be discussed is “people stacking”.  The concept of private homes with 3 or 4 bedrooms is so 1950′s.  Get people out of their big homes and into  “city-lets”.  These are communities where everyone will live in perfect harmony in high rise buildings occupying about 800 square feet of living space.

Once the population is more condensed, the progressive way of transportation is lots of new public transportation systems so hordes of people do not need those gas guzzling cars and trucks.  The masses will travel by bike, take the trolley or walk wherever they go.  Schools, shopping, health clinics (government run) and work, will all be nearby.  The Green Utopia.

Some attending London’s three day convention:

Yvo de Boer – once head of the U.N. Framework Convention on CLIMATE CHANGE.

Shobhakar Dhakal, executive director of the Global Carbon Project based in Tokyo.  He should know a thing or two about cramped living.

And to represent America’s “greenest” state, Dr. Roberto Sanchez-Rodriguez, Professor Emeritus of the Environmental Science Department at UC Riverside.

I can hardly wait for their final conclusions…can you???

By Warren Duffy

On Tuesday, March 27, 2012, Mary Nichols, Chairman of the California Air Resources Board (CARB), or as we prefer to reference it, California Arbitrary Rules for Bankruptcy, appeared to address the California State Senate Select Committee on Environment, Economy and Climate Change.  Her personal notes must have read, “Making up this scam as we go along.”

The ‘scam’ is the auctioning (sure sounds like fun) of ‘carbon credits’ under California’s unfolding granddaddy of them all, Cap and Trade program.  This is a scheme to penalize any and all polluters, large and small, throughout the state and apparently hitting its first snag.  Nichols explained to the panel the first CARB ‘carbon credit auction’ has now been postponed from August 15, 2012 to November 14, 2012.  However, in Nichols brief (nine page presentation), she was not clear as to why the auction was delayed.

Nichols announced a “test run” carbon credit auction will be staged in August, but the first “for real” auction won’t be held until November 14, 2012.  The November date conflicts directly with Governor Jerry Brown’s 2012-13 Budget Summary released several weeks ago.  In it, the governor explains over three pages how the state will receive anticipated revenues of $1-billion from California’s carbon credit auction.

When California’s then-Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger signed the 2006 Global Warming Solutions Act into law, the state created a multi-state carbon exchange system.   On February 26, 2007, Governors Napolitano of Arizona, Schwarzenegger of California, Richardson of New Mexico, Kulongoski of Oregon, and Gregoire of Washington signed an agreement establishing the Western Climate Initiative (WCI), a joint effort to reduce GHG emissions and address climate change. Later, the governors of Utah and Montana, as well as the premiers of British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Quebec joined as Partners.  Eventually, CARB claimed 11 states, 4 Canadian Provinces and 100 Indian Tribes were included in the scheme.

One by one, all those within the U.S., except California, have cancelled their plans to be part of the WCI. Outside US borders, only Quebec remains.  Status of the Indian tribes remains a question. In her speech Tuesday, Nichols, mentioned that formal plans to coordinate with Canada’s Quebec are still in the works…perhaps more of “making up this scam as we go along.”

How the Western Climate Initiative partners will include commercial carbon credit commodity traders, like the Cantor Fitzgerald group that opened offices in San Francisco September 2011, remains unclear.   The new Bay Area group is currently offering speculative carbon futures for the years 2013, 14 and 15.  When Cantor Fitzgerald opened their headquarters last year, they claimed their last six years were spent as the overseers of the EU carbon trading platform — the largest cap and trade scheme to date. They described California to be the second largest carbon trading market.

The Western Climate Initiative is not headed by a scientist or a climatologist.  Why bother? Gary Gero, a graduate of the London School of Finance and a member of the Commodities Future’s Trading Commission’s Energy and Environmental Markets Advisory Committee has been selected to command the leadership position.  Obviously, the group will have little to do with the scientific side of “global warming”, but, instead, focus on the profit making component of the California’s Cap and Trade operations.

Nichols was certain to make clear in her Tuesday address, “The Cap and Trade program will provide an economy-wide price signal that we are serious about powering our economy with truly clean, advanced and sustainable technologies.  And it also makes it clear that investment in these technologies will be rewarded.”

With businesses steadily leaving the state, how that price signal will be imposed on the entire California economy and “rewards” passed along to the deserving, is truly unknown.

Stay tuned….we are “making up this scam as we go along”.

By Warren Duffy

Years ago, I saturated my nightly greens with a yummy, high calorie dressing known as ‘Green Goddess’.  Since then, I have had to cut back on many things, including my my devotion to “Green Goddess” dressing.

However, it would not surprise me if before long  Governor Brown and his state  environmental devotees  sponsor a bill to construct a “Green Goddess Temple” for all Californians to make pilgrimages and pay homage to the new state deity.

California, once known as the ‘Golden’ State for its abundance of gold, is tarnished and now recognized as the ‘Environmental Friendly Green’ State.  Environmental activists from around the world are attracted to California because we stand alone as a state with complete devotion to the ‘Green Goddess’.   From what the main stream media reports,  California must have lots of  “green jobs” with business flocking to the state and unemployment at an all time low.  The opposite is true.  It may be friendly to the environment…not business.

In May 2011, Chief.net wrote, “…. in the eyes of the 550 CEOs surveyed for Chief Executive‘s seventh annual report on the best and worst states in which to do business, it’s (CA) that led the states, and the seventh year California—to no one’s great surprise—ranked as worst state.”  It went on to marvel at the fact that, “California, once a business friendly state, continues to conduct a war on its own economy.” Adding,  “Sacramento seems to take perverse delight in job-killing legislation. . .”

Look at the catechism of the blessings of a green economy and green jobs.  It has turned out to be nonsense.  The Brookings Institute, hardly a Tea Party- Ultra Conservative-Oil sponsored Think Tank, claims green jobs grew from 2003 to 2010 in the Silicone Valley (a garden of gods to environmentalists).  In fact, there were more green jobs in 2003 than 2010.

The mantra at the chapel of Cap and Trade and led by CARB teaches green devotees that cutting green house gases by 25% between now and 2020, will put the state well on its way to eliminating 80% of that devilish pollution by the year 2050.   Amazing!  Of course, Governor Brown allows the worship as he anticipates California’s pot of new found gold of $1BILLION (at a minimum) following the state’s first Auction of ‘Carbon Credits”.

However, the “Christian Science Monitor” recently carried a story about California’s “Cap and Trade” scheme that green devotees would call downright heretical.  It quoted the head of the AB32 Implementation Group, executive director, Shelly Sullivan saying, “The costs that will be incurred by California’s regulated industries are alarming.  Consumers and taxpayers will ultimately pick up the tab for higher costs for electricity, consumer products, government service or even college tuition.”  Could Ms. Sullivan have information about Cap and Trade that Governor Brown and CARB director Mary Nichols has not been presented in their  Super Green House (once known as the Capitol in Sacramento).

If Ms. Sullivan’s statements were not bad enough, just as “all the state was to be taxed” under Cap and Trade, a rush to eliminate heathen carbon dioxide, CARB’s low carbon fuel standard was declared unconstitutional in at the end of December 2011 by a Federal judge in San Francisco.

The heresy might well end if only California politicians and the environmental devotees would search out data complied from NASA satellites for the last decade and reported in the Earth’s Climate Records.  You can check out the reports for yourself and find since 1979, when the records began, that has been no global warming.  As a matter of fact, current records analyzed at the University of Alabama report the earth’s temperature is slightly below the average of the past 33 years. Talk about an ‘inconvenient truth’…alert the high priest at the Green Goddess Temple, Al Gore, that things are not as they first appeared.

No doubt when they design and build the shrine to the Green Goddess in Sacramento, it will surely cost all of us.  Major sacrifices will need to be made.  But in this age of religious tolerance, none of us want to be guilty of making fun of anyone’s belief system, no matter how outrageous it may appear.

As California continues to be impacted by the economy crushing overreach of not just state regulations, (Cap and Trade and AB32),  but Federal regulations (California Environmentalists suing the Federal Government in the name of the so-called endangered “delta smelt”), CFACTSoCal founder, Warren Duffy did some in depth research into the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) an environmental advocacy group (a law firm) and its co-founder, John Bryson.

What was California dealt….to protect the smelt???

Bryson’s, (now Commerce Secretary nominated by Obama and approved appointment in 2011 by ‘go-along-to-get-along’ Republicans), firm threatened in 2007 to sue the Feds to protect the delta smelt.  If you do not have time to read the background…long story short,  NRDC was successful in protecting the smelt.  “How”, you ask?

The Federal government became the controller of the “spicket” for California’s water supply from the Delta to her agricultural “heartland” the Central Valley.  Towns in this area of California such as Fresno and Corcoran have become the most impoverished in AMERICA.  Not to worry though, the smelt is doing quite nicely!

You thought Solyndra was bad? We think the following background of our nation’s Commerce Secretary and tentacles reaching to California will make Solyndra look like just one of the family

Oh – did we mention that Mary Nichols (the same Mary Nichols serving as the chairwoman of CARB), was the founding attorney of the L.A. branch of NRDC ?   One other thing, NRDC is defending CARB in the myriad of laws suits currently being filed against them.

Wake up America! Environmentalists are using these antics as pawns for nothing more than a Global Society.  As goes California, so goes the Nation!

FACTS on Global Warming, Cap and Trade and AB32

University of San Diego

Joan B Kroc Institute for Peace & Justice Theater

Saturday,  March 24, 2012 from 7 – 9 p..m.

REGISTER NOW

On February 29, 2012, a forum was held in Rancho Mirage, CA to discuss issues stemming from AB32/Agenda 21.  These rules and regulations were taken directly from the playbook of the United Nations 1997 Kyoto Agreement . Topics include California’s “Global Warming Solutions Act of 2006″/Assembly Bill 32, Cap and Trade, Smart Growth, Sustainable Development, SB375, etc.

Do not be fooled with campaigns waged through the mainstream media by active globalists.  Climate rules and regulations are the entry point of global governance.

The complete forum is now available at www.lightonthedesert.org.  You can also visit the Elise Richmond Shop at http://eliserichmond.com/  to hear recorded interviews with many of the of the presenters.

Cap and Trade, the scheme dreamed up by the United Nations and included in the Kyoto Accords of 1997 and delivered to the U.S. Senate with a vote by simply ignoring the plan, is being implemented in one of America’s most floundering economies, California.  Signed into law by Governor “Schwarzen-housekeeper” in 2006 as AB32, “The Global Warming Solutions Act”, Cap and Trade was born and implemented 1-1-12.   The first carbon auctions are to be held in  August 2012.

Never mind the state is broke.  California’s economy once the 8th largest, has just slipped to 9th place.  However, the annual state budget deficit is so massive, not even the state’s bookkeepers can, with any certainty, estimate its actual size. Some say the annual budget is $16 BILLION, while others estimate it in the low $20′s. The state simply has a habit of bleeding red ink. Like our Federal government, California has been doing so for years with a big difference.  They are unable to print money.

California’s real estate market tanked half a decade ago with the paper value of those homes being reduced by 20 to 30%.  The state’s unemployment rate sits at about 12%.  However, some blue collar labor unions – particularly construction workers – report the jobless rate at an estimated 40%.

All things considered, the California Air Resources Board (CARB) -unbridled by the environmentally correct state Legislature and an “ever-Green” Governor – refused to reign in any the new pollution rules/regulations/standards imposed state and economy wide.  One such rule demands that in 8 years (2020), California’s oil refineries must reduce the sale of so-called “dirty oil” in the state to address the problem of air pollution.

Will oil companies simply stop manufacturing so called “dirty oil”? Hardly.  To be productive and keep employees with jobs, the oil companies will simply ship their products across state line to be sold elsewhere in the country.  In order to produce fuel for California’s mobile population, these same companies will import “clean oil” from outside the state to be used under the new cap and trade standards.

Diesel truck owners have been forced dramatically to comply with the new air standards.  Trucks older than 2005 must be replaced with newer models required to perform extensive and expensive retrofitting.  Every California licensed truck is required to filter their exhaust emissions through new filtering systems…some initially causing numerous fires as trucks were idling.  Consumers must understand their increased costs of goods (food, clothing, etc.) all points to the increased costs strangling the truck owners.

Yes, California is the home of  Solyndra and other “alternative energy” boondoggles.  It is the state with thousands of acres of pristine desert land (and the protected tortoises roaming among the tumbleweeds) soon to be the home of endless fields of solar farms and wind mills.  All of this as the state harkens back to the days of 2006 when “Global Warming” was believed by many to be a natural disaster waiting to happen, yet  continually found as “false”.

California is still dependent on oil to power the turbines that generate its energy and deliver water to most of the desert land and area Los Angeles and Southern California occupy.  Most of the power plants have been fueled by coal, but now must convert to natural gas to turn those turbines.  Who will pay for that switch?  Guess????

Heedless of the wind and weather, CARB moves ahead with the massive “Cap and Trade” scheme with a slight amusement figuring “California is at it again”.  The rest of the country must clearly understand why medical marijuana was passed in the state….no one could tolerate this madness unless they were high.